Chaos, strange attractors, and fractal basin boundaries

Conference · Sun Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1989 · Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA)

OSTI ID:6504151

Grebogi, C ^[1]

---

1. Univ. of Maryland, College Park (USA)

Even simple mathematical models of physical systems are often observed to exhibit rather complex time evolution. Upon observation, one often has the feeling that such complex time evolutions could, for most practical purposes, be best characterized by statistical properties rather than by detailed knowledge of the exact process. In such situations, the time evolution is often labeled chaotic or turbulent. The study of chaotic dynamics has recently undergone explosive growth. Motivation for this comes partly from the fact that chaotic dynamics is being found to be of fundamental importance in many branches of science and engineering. Examples illustrating the wide-ranging applications of chaotic dynamics to scientific and engineering problems are the following: fluid dynamics, biology, ecology, meteorology, optics, electronics, mechanical engineerings, physiology, economics, chemistry, accelerator technology, thermonuclear fusion, celestial mechanics, and oceanography. The common element in all of the above topics is that they involve nonlinearity in some way. Indeed chaos is expected to be common whenever nonlinearity plays a role. Since nonlinearity is inherent in so much of science and engineering, an understanding of chaos is essential. Given the varied nature of applications where chaos is important, it is natural that researchers in a broad range of fields have become interested in and have contributed to recent developments in chaos.

• OSTI ID: 6504151
• Report Number(s): CONF-891103--
• Conference Information: Journal Name: Transactions of the American Nuclear Society; (USA) Journal Volume: 60
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

657002* -- Theoretical & Mathematical Physics-- Classical & Quantum Mechanics
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
990200 -- Mathematics & Computers
ACCELERATORS
BIOLOGY
CHEMISTRY
ECOLOGY
EFFICIENCY
ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT
EQUIPMENT
FLUID FLOW
FRACTALS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MATHEMATICS
MECHANICS
METEOROLOGY
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
OCEANOGRAPHY
OPTICAL SYSTEMS
PARTICLE PROPERTIES
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
STRANGENESS
TIME DEPENDENCE